Skip to main content

Scientists of Morals: Mahatma Gandhi and Immanuel Kant's Experiments with Truth

Once I had privilege to witness a lecture, which was delivered by Prof. Keith Hart at India International Centre, New Delhi. The theme of the lecture was "Cosmopolitanism in Gandhi and Kant". At that point of time, I was a nascent scholar of Law, for me, that lecture was too complex to comprehend by any ordinary mind. However, the basic theme was quite fascinating. The two  practitioners of morals at two different time and space, if they have an opportunity to initiate a dialogue, how will they take each other as a thinker and practitioner of ethics? As a student of Gandhi and Kant I am of the firm view that Gandhi and Kant were two different paradigms of ethics. Gandhi was a scientist who experimented with the conjectures which was there in theology since ancient and medieval times. Kant, on the other hand, was deeply pious and well disciplined as a person who lived for the sake of enrichment of moral laws. Both Gandhi and Kant broke the "dogmatic slumber" of religions and its institutionalised tyranny with their scientific attitude towards moral laws. Kantian Copernican revolution is well known in epistemology. He was a moral scientist who developed the method to search the "categorical imperatives", in literal term, "morally binding duties". He avoided instrumentalist trap in which Bentham, Mills, or Berkeley, had a company with each other. He expounded those three significant methods to find the categorical imperatives, such as, "treat humanity not merely a means but an end in itself". Kantian deontological prudence preferred duty over right, morals law over greed, and desire, autonomy over heteronomy. Similarly, Gandhi as a scientist of moral laws never avoided trial and error method in quest of truth, for he accepted mistakes as his the biggest teacher. Gandhi's Hind Swaraj rejected violence and attitude of violence even though end might be euphorically exciting. Gandhi's ethics prefers "exemplarity" over passivity like a herd. Being exemplar, he led with his actions rather than words. His duty oriented thoughts and actions were quite similar to Kant with slight deviation, like Kant starts with Universal ideas to apply in particular domain, and Gandhi, on the other hand, starts with particular ideas to experiment with it, then it may be universal in character. Interestingly, Gandhi never claimed that what he found as a truth necessarily will be true for all. Does it mean that he was a "moral relativist" thinker? Perhaps, he never claimed anything universal as a moral principle. However, for him, truth and non-violence are the genesis of all morals which he experimented with, accepted, or discarded. 

Kantian ethics had deep influence of "stoicism". A famous stoics, Marcus Aurelius wrote in his Meditation, "If virtue is accessible to one is accessible to all". Kantian ethics adopts this postulate as a discipline to universalize the particulars, to treat human dignity as the highest virtue, which must not be compromised at the cost of treating a human like a chattel, or a child who needs care and treatment from a father figure. He considered this situation as tutelage from which a person needs to be freed so as to be autonomous and responsible as human being. This was the spirit of enlightenment. Gandhian ethics never denies the very dignity of humans rather he advocates to invent and exercise the virtue. Because, the colonial experience strengthened the believes of Gandhi that it is  "self-dependence" which is far more important than relying over others for emancipation. For him truth is not simply a matter of preaching rather action. Both moral leaders advocated in favour of "courage" to practice the virtue. Both were locally sensitive and universally awakened. They never reached to the ultimate truth, in fact, never aspired to have that. Both remained as students of moral laws in their whole life. And in the end, led by example to have with us the spirit of cosmopolitanism. 

In our contemporary society when market and greed are preferred over our collective existence. Moral laws are crying from the graveyards of two cosmopolitan leaders and saints, but unfortunately there is no such law exists amid instrumentalists, positivists, and, pragmatics students of law.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Meeting Justice Rohinton Nariman in a Sunday Morning

Aristotle once wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics that there are four significant virtues for human beings, namely Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Courage. There are a few judges who have courage and sense of justice, both. Hon'ble Mr. Justice Rohinton Nariman has been truly an exemplar judge and erudite historian, theologian and philologist, a great scholar of music as well as a courageous and meticulous jurist of our country. He did his Master of Laws from Harvard Law School in 1980-81 and taught by one of the finest jurists of the last century, Roberto Unger. He became Senior Advocate in 1993 in the age of 37 and also served as Solicitor General of India in 2011 before he was elevated as a judge of the Supreme Court of India in 2014. He delivered many landmark judgments, including Shreya Singhal v. Union of India. There are a few people with whom time moves too fast, but to count that experience takes ages. Justice Rohinton Nariman is one of those great jurists with whom a meet...
1 comment
Read more

The Rhythm of Law: A Book Review

Book Cover of the Book Law is the subject and object of curiosity since the ancient civilizations started its journey of contemplation about the order within the nature; its mysterious paths inspired the germination of metaphysics. Initially, human's mode of existence lived as instinctual life as per the call of nature. Instincts were primarily used as a medium for survival and to receive the call of wisdom from the “order of nature”. Humans are primarily one of the modes of expression of the nature, as Spinoza calls it attributes which express the essence of God and modes which are derived from the essence of God or nature (Spinoza, Ethics). The doorway of all the laws, as brooding presence of harmony, may be received if one is alert to recognize its call. Prof. Raman Mittal has penned a beautiful book titled “The Rhythm of Law”. The uniqueness of the book is its potentialities to express the inexpressible wisdom. Martin Heidegger in his Magnum Opus, Being and Time, expresses the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Violence of Law and Ethics of Care

The worldliness of world is constituted by care (Martin Heidegger). Only in our concernfull dealing with the things around, the existence of being may be understood. In our everydayness of care and concern the world appears to our consciousness. Care is the language, a nomos of our existence, yet it is hardly perceptible in a world of law, which was rightly defined by Hans Kelsen and Max Weber as “legitimate use of violence”. The monopoly of political state over the violent nature of law makes it the most elevated institutions in relation to various social orders co-existing with the political state. Politics, once conceived as “an art of possibilities” by Harold Laski, is now becoming merely a language of allegations, counter-allegations, trickery and manipulation, in one statement, it symbolizes the archetypical character of violence whose expression is apparent in the existence of law. Violence has become our mode of existence in a sense that it speaks through us when the humanity f...
Post a Comment
Read more